


synecdoche

by starlight_sugar



Category: RWBY
Genre: Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:51:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>yang has questions, blake has answers, and sometimes the truth is hard to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	synecdoche

**Author's Note:**

> synecdoche is a literary device in which the author uses a part to represent a whole.

"you could’ve told us," yang says. it’s dark outside and they’re ambling along the lakeshore, because neither of them could sleep. there’s no judgement in her voice, but blake almost wishes there was. she knows how to deal with judgement.

"i could’ve," she agrees instead of apologizing. "but it’s not the kind of thing you can just spring on someone. if any of you were seen as faunus sympathizers-"

"then we would deal with the knuckleheads ourselves. you know that." yang glances over, narrows her eyes. "c’mon, what’s the real reason?"

blake frowns, trying to shape her thoughts into something she can say. “i’m not ashamed of what i am,” she says at last. her ears twitch, unhidden in the night air. “but i’d rather lie to my teammates than lose them, and i had no way to know if any of you would care.”

"and after you knew we wouldn’t?"

"you and ruby wouldn’t," she corrects absently. "weiss took some convincing."

yang lets out an annoyed little huff. “but she came around, like i knew she would, so-“

"not everyone comes around," blake says sharply. she stops walking, and yang turns to face her, surprised. "and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll understand why i act the way i do. i’ve lost people once they found out i’m a faunus,"

"then are those the kind of people you really want to be around?"

"they used to be."

yang presses her lips together, folds her arms, sighs. “okay, so you didn’t want to tell us at first because you’ve gotten crap all your life. and you didn’t want to tell us later because you had no guarantees we’d keep it secret or react well, right?”

"right," blake agrees, and realizes half a second too late that she’d never said anything about being scared of her team telling her secret.

yang looks like she’s been shot through the heart. “you - did you really-“

"nonono, yang," blake tries, but yang has already spun around and started storming off. "it’s  _not like that,_  yang, come on-” she stumbles into motion behind yang, she has to make this right, she needs to explain. “it’s not because of anything you did-“

"then  _why?”_  yang shouts, and whirls around. blake is prepared for her to be angry, furious, livid, but not sad. and oh, she looks so  _sad_. “why does it have to be like this, huh? why can’t you just trust people to like you for your - your brains, or your sense of humor, or  _you?”_

blake tries to breathe, tries to remember how. “because i’m different,” she says, and it comes out achingly sad, because she knows that this is bigger than her, and not all fauna are likable.

"hardly," yang snaps, "and that’s not my point. yeah, you’re different, why does it have to  _matter?”_

"because someone decided it did, i don’t know." she’s sad and she’s tired and she doesn’t know how to deal with yang when she’s angry. "because people who i used to call my friends are robbing dust stores and cursing humanity, and humans forget that there’s people like velvet, who never did anything wrong, or sun, who only breaks the law because the law wasn’t written with him in mind. they don’t deserve to be treated like criminals."

yang goes completely still. “and you,” she says, almost desperate, “don’t deserve it either, right, blake?”

blake thinks about that for a few seconds, about a kitten who wanted to change the world, about a train and a boy with red hair.

"i tried to fix things," she says at last, "and i made them worse. i’m more of a criminal than either of them."

yang stares at her and then nods slowly. “okay,” she says, and from the way she says it blake knows it’s not okay, but they’re both willing to pretend for now.

"okay," blake whispers, and closes her eyes. "let’s go back to the room."

yang takes her hand gently. “you don’t deserve it,” she says fiercely. blake opens her eyes. yang looks just as sure of herself as ever. the sky is blue, ruby is her sister, blake does not deserve guilt. just another fact.

as blake lets yang pull her back towards their room, she amends her newest fact, edits it as she stores it in the back of her mind. oh, she deserves guilt, but yang xiao long doesn’t think she does. maybe she’s worth saving after all.


End file.
